Cyber Essentials: Our commitment to your data protection

Cyber-attacks and threats to data security are an ongoing concern for organisations and individuals. As technology changes so does the risk of breaches to business systems and vital data. Here at Thomas International, we take cyber security seriously and are committed to ensuring our business processes enforce the protection of our systems and data we hold.
That is why we gained Cyber Essentials accreditation as our first line of defence.

What is Cyber Essentials?

Cyber Essentials is a government scheme that support organisations to protect themselves from malicious threats and cyber-attacks by controlling and putting processes in place and implementing software as a precaution.

Thomas International has successfully undergone a self-assessment questionnaire and an external vulnerability scan ensuring that we have all the measures in place to defend ourselves against common attacks targeting organisations and IT systems.

To carefully prepare for this accreditation, we have upgraded our systems by implementing the following steps to our day-to-day practice:

An industry-leading firewall technology has been installed to protect all our devices. These firewalls can protect our systems from known and unknown attacks by constantly updating its firmware. The systems are configured to control the data and information that is allowed to enter or leave our network, filtering traffic and lowering the risk of a malicious attack.

Secured settings have been applied to all of our devices and online accounts. Multifactor authentication, industry-leading password management software and least privilege access models help protect our network and online accounts used by our employees. This ensures our data is kept safe reducing the risks of information being compromised. All of our employees are educated on potential risks and attacks from social engineering where hackers attempt to gain access to accounts using a bogus targeted email or other electronic communication.

Our least privilege access policy ensures employees only have access to the data they require to do their job effectively. Administrator accounts are granted only to specific personnel and these accounts are never used for day-to-day activity.

Robust anti-malware and anti-virus systems have been installed creating a strong protection against viruses and enabling us to react quickly in the eventuality of threat.

Our data is backed up to both secure onsite storage and an offsite data centre. The data is encrypted at rest ensuring backups themselves are not compromised. Data is backed up every 15 minutes allowing a “point in time” restore of vital data in the unlikely event that data is destroyed via a malicious attack.

What does it mean for you?

This cyber security milestone assures you that we value your trust and carefully manage your data every day. Our continuous improvement aims to give you confidence and peace of mind when working with Thomas International.

What’s next?

In an evolving world of technology, our processes and software need constant improvement. With this in mind, we are currently working towards getting Cyber Essentials Plus accredited and implementing strong cyber security practices.

Is your data secure in case of malicious threat? If you wish to know more about Cyber Essentials and its benefits, please click on the following link to visit the official government website: https://www.cyberessentials.ncsc.gov.uk.